Have You Played... Sir, You Are Being Hunted?

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

DISCLAIMER: FELLOW RPS FOUNDER JIM ROSSIGNOL AND SOME OTHER CHUMS MADE THIS GAME. DO NOT TRUST A WORD I SAY ABOUT IT.
It’s a shame that you can’t trust a word I say about Sir, You Are Being Hunted [official site] (Madam options are also available in-game, FYI), because I really do believe that there are reasons you should play it, and it’s not just a case of ‘my mate made this’.

In a year where we’ve all being going gaga after Metal Gear Solid’s open world, gadgety stealth, it’s worth remembering that a smaller game experimented with similar ideas and a far odder, more sinister theme a couple of years ago, and with an entire procedurally-generated countryside to boot. Sir is without doubt an odd one, in terms of the degree to which you’re on the back foot and how much it becomes about pure avoidance and/or running away.

In fairness, the clue’s in the name – you are being hunted, not you are hunting. But all that fear and the limited capacity to do much about it for quite some time makes it an acquired taste.

When I play it – which I do surprisingly often – it’s for the unsettling, familiar pleasure of hanging around in Sir’s robot-haunted moors rather than with any intention of ‘beating’ the game. (I’ve never beaten it, in fact, which is primarily because I treat it as a sort of lethal walking simulator. Sorry Jim, James and Tom!) Those moors and woodlands remind me of things I knew so well as a young lad – Hammer horror movies and being dragged on wet, windy walks with my parents every weekend.

I hated those walks then, because I wanted to read Warhammer 40,000 novels and play XCOM instead of communing with nature, but now I relish the sight of them, able to approach them at my own pace, with my own agenda. Sir is, I think, as good as it gets for recreating the essence of a very British wilderness (although the recent, more exploration and conversation-focused PS4 exclusive Everybody’s Gone The Rapture makes for an apt companion piece).

DISCLAIMER: FELLOW RPS FOUNDER JIM ROSSIGNOL AND SOME OTHER CHUMS MADE THIS GAME. DO NOT TRUST A WORD I SAY ABOUT IT.